Does anyone think Jim returns next season?
As a non-Columbia fan, based on his post-game interview after the Brown win, no.
I didn’t see the post game interview. What happened?
If it was my decision, he definitely wouldn’t. It is sad because next year’s team definitely has potential, but the move should be focusing on O’keefe, Cobb, Ritter, Cunningham & others as a project of a future competitive team. He took in 2016 a team that was fighting close to get into ivy playoffs and after 8 years he has managed to tranform it into a team that is consistently bottom of the league and that relies on miracle runs to be able to make it close (like last year). The fact that we have 0 defense with such fast hand players is ridiculous. The off-season schedule of this year was ridiculous. He has been given enough chances.
Hard to describe-just rude and sarcastic to the poor TV guy.
Thanks. I will try to find it.
The league results have been disappointing. They could have beat Yale, should have beat Princeton and could easily be 4-3. Not sure what happened.
Yes, but decisions like giving Avery Brown the last possession plays for a shoot, when he is probably the most inconsistent guard in terms of shooting in the rotation, and poor time-out management, made us loose this 2-3 games that are necessary to compete. And most of it is Engles fault.
Why was O’Keefe ignored by the Columbia Coaching Staff for nearly the whole season? Very puzzling to me.
He is 1 of 5 guards originally expected to come off the bench. It’s a big group and nobody has been the clear best player. Originally, Cooper was the 1st guard off the bench and O’Keefe, Romanelli, Cunningham and Cobb have all seen time. Cobb and Cunningham are better defenders and Romanelli is typically pretty solid with the ball. It’s not a big surprise that these guys take some time to develop and find a consistent spot in the rotation. I wouldn’t say these guys have been “ignored”. They’ve been practicing 3 hours a day since Sept which is very important. All said, it does seem like Cobb and O’Keefe have emerged as the 2 back up guards.
I think it’s a combination of having 4 young guards on the bench who all seem to have potential but not knowing what are they better at, the fact that Engles doesn’t seem to focus a lot on having a main shooter on court (which I believe is what O’keefe is), and the fact that we already have 3 guards used to all the offensive plays from last year, which most of them work well.
Maybe, but it seems more likely that prior to the beginning of the season Engles simply ranked the more highly recruited Cobb and Cunningham ahead of O’Keefe as Columbia’s top two backcourt recruits. That would explain why O’Keefe saw so little playing time compared to Cobb and Cunningham during the first half of the season. Nothing wrong with that except that, for whatever reason, Engles didn’t realize how good a player O’Keefe was until Engles finally went to the end of the bench in the middle of theI Ivy L:eague season after Cooper, Romanelli, de la Rosa and one or two others
Unlikely. The 3 freshmen guards have played similar minutes and compete against each other every single day. Any preseason ranking has been long forgotten.
Do I want him to return? An emphatic NO!!! Engles ia a horrendous game with an atrocious record. Do I expect him to return? An emphatic YES!!! Engles boss is Columbia’s Athletic Director. He’s the same fellow who signed Engles up nine years ago and has approved Engles return without explanation for the last nine years. Bad is still Bad. Columbia has had some bad men’s basketball coaches, but the bad ones have all been duly terminated by the athletic directors in a reasonable amount of time. For whatever reason Pilling has not done that yet.
Not sure I understand. Are you saying that O’Keefe has played similar minutes to Cobb and Cunningham. I’m not sure about that. Of course, a good part of Columbia’s pre-Conference schedule was with Division III schools the only purpose of which was to make it seem that Engles had learned how to coach. The Division III schools treat those game correctly as “exhibiitons.” Finally, just because Cunningham, Cobb and O’Keefe might compete with one another in practice that doesn’t mean anything unless the coach knows what he is doing. Engles and his assistants have not demonstrated much success in that regard the past eight or nine years.
Your obsession with coaching criticism detracts from the players success. O’Keefe played really well against Brown and seems to be developing into a good player. Same with Cobb recently. That’s the story this week.
I respectfully disagree with your suggestion that somehow “…coaching criticism detracts from the players success.” Obviously, that is not the case. Of course O’Keefe, Thompson, Noland, Brown, Cunningham , Cobb were all outstanding in the exciting come-from-behind victory over Brown. I couldn’t be happier. However, winning a single Ivy League game doesn’t make feel any better about Coach Engles of 23-81 against our Ivy League opponent over the last eight years or his 70-143 record overall. Columbia has many outstanding coaches in almost every sport and I have never uttered a word of criticism of anyone of them. It’s my opinion that Engles is just not up to the standard of excellence to which Columbia’s athletes and fans are entitled.
Yes. No doubt he’ll be back.
Then again, he’s been a part of as many of more winning efforts as a number of past Columbia basketball coaches - Hill, Jones, Halas, Szoke, Maher, Penders;
just to name a few.
O’Keefe wasn’t ignored - that’s as much of an overstatement as the criticism the coach has weathered, relating to his post-game comments and manner toward television interviewer Lance Meadow, last Saturday night The fact is, Columbia began the season with four talented upperclassmen guards - thousand point scorer Geronimo Rubio de la Rosa, Kenny Noland, Avery Brown and Jayden Cooper. And so,few minutes were available early-on for O’Keefe, behind these four players; not to mention that the team won eleven of twelve games to start the season. A recent injury to de la Rosa, along with the mysterious disappearance of Cooper, have created an opportunity for O’Keefe to join the on-court rotation.
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